Blue
by allan
Summary: A Krypto-Canadian hits the skids


     It was another bar, any bar.  Entering, Don gave the patrons a bleary scan.  Bikers and their under-age 'sleazy riders' shooting pool.  Nutbars and junkies staring holes into their private hells off in a corner.  White-fingered loggers with a couple of over-the-hill whores at a table covered in emptied schooners.  

     His kinda place.  There was room at the bar and nobody paid the least attention to another unshaven loser with slept-in clothes and thirsty eyes.

     Don plunked himself down on a stool.  The bar mirror covered his back and the booze was all in front of him.  It wasn't that Don had enemies, he just didn't have any friends.  You go to bars for the company that misery enjoys, when you can't trust yourself to be alone anymore.

     He ordered a boiler maker and reached absently for a newspaper left on the counter.  "The Globe", some easterner must have left it.  He glanced idly at the paper, same old lies, Toronto was too much like New York for him.  Too much crime, too much attitude, too much everything, and always so superior.  He crumpled the paper up and wiped spilt beer off the mahogany, rubbing its nose in it.

     "That was my paper."

     Don looked up, focusing on the sound.  At the shady end of the bar was a guy, a big guy for all he was hunched over his drink.

     "Hey, I'll buy you a "Sun", okay?"  Don would sooner drink than fight, so he slid a quarter down the counter top.

     "No," the other said in a flat voice.  "I mean I used to write for them."

     So, he wasn't going to be mauled by some homesick lake-head.  In fact the guy sounded so down, it almost cheered Don up.

     "Heck, I'm a used-to-be myself," he said, moving down the bar.  "Buy you a beer?"

     The other lifted his face from out the shadows.  Maybe early thirties, horn-rim glasses, regular features, a boyish dark curl of hair falling over his forehead.  He looked too normal in his double-breasted suit and tie for such a dive.  Then Don saw his eyes, flat and dead as squashed 'possum on a lonely road.

     "Why thank you, sir," said the stranger.

     Sir?  Don wasn't used to manners.  "Name's Don, I never made the honours list for some reason," he said, holding out his hand.

     "Pleased to meet you, Don," the other said, shaking his hand with the exaggerated care of a drunk.  "I'm Clark."

     Don signaled for two more beers and paid for them.  They clinked glasses, but before Clark drank, he took a tiny pewter flask from his pocket and let a pale green droplet fall into his drink.  It wasn't St.Patrick's day, and Don figured there was enough water in the beer already.

     "Hey," he remonstrated softly, glad the barkeep was busy at the other end.  "Can the joy-juice, you want to get us both bounced?"

     Clark looked bemused.  "Oh, you mean drugs?"  He smiled.  "No, this is more like insulin.  I can't get intoxicated without it."

     Don let it pass, if the big guy started getting squirrelly he could always split.  Who was he to judge another barfly's tipple anyhow?  "So," he said, changing the subject.  "You get fired or what?"

     Clark swallowed convulsively and scowled.  "I quit."

     Sure, thought Don.  That's what all us quitters say.  "Wanna talk about it?" he suggested.

     Clark shook his head; less a refusal, more like some punchy boxer trying to figure the count.  "Not yet," Clark muttered, and held up two fingers for the barman.

     He peeled a bill off the thick roll and waved away his change.  Don decided the sob story was worth waiting for if Clark was throwing the loot around.

     "You wanna be careful flashing that," he suggested, nodding his head in the direction of the pool tables.  "Guy could get rolled real easy."

     Clark seemed to find this very amusing, near choking on his beer.

     Maybe he's packing heat, Don wondered.  The dude was big, but he didn't look tough, almost a baby-face compared to the usual denizens.  More likely a sucker on the wrong side of the tracks who thought a little karate went a long way.

     "No offense, buddy," Don persisted.  "But you don't look like you do this often.  Some of the fuckers here would shank you for the fun of it."

     Clark smiled absently.  "On the contrary,I'm very familiar with criminals, big ones mostly.  A reporter in the metropolis gets involved in just about anything."

     "But you jacked it in," Don observed.

     The big guy stared into his beer.  "It wasn't the job."

     "Was it the booze?"  Don indicated his glass.  "That was my problem, that and pussy."

     Clark frowned.

     Okay, Don thought.  He don't like dirty talk.  Bet it was pussy.

     "I never drank, never did anything unhealthy" Clark muttered.  "There was a lot I didn't do."

     "Not me," Don confessed.  "Sounds like you were raised proper; me, I was dragged up."  His mouth twisted.  "Fucking parents, fuck 'em all."

     Clark looked hard at him, and Don decided maybe he wasn't such a wimp after all.

     "Mine are dead," Clark said grimly.  "Both of them."  He shook two more drops in his fresh beer, took a swallow and grimaced painfully.  "I had the best mom and pop in this world, or any other."

     "Yeah, well lucky you.  I was in and out of care like a pawned pistol," snarled Don, his private demons oblivious even to free drinks.

     Clark removed his horn-rims and looked distantly into the mirror.  "I was a foundling."

     Don got edgy when big drunks took off their glasses.  "Okay, okay, some of my foster parents were good shits too.  Quite the coincidence we both got dumped, eh?"

     The other just looked at him.  "My biological parents had their reasons."

     Don figured he'd better drop it.  "Sure," he placated.  "Anyway, not like it was the end of the world."

     A sad, knowing smile crossed Clark's face; but he put the glasses back on and reached for his beer.

     In their conversational lull, Don became aware of an altercation brewing.  Some cycle slut withholding on the take.  Not smart with any pimp, stupid with bikers.

     A slap cut through the bar's fug like a shot.  The barkeep found something else to do, and too-loud conversations quickly filled the silence.  Don turned back to his beer, but Clark was already on none-too-steady feet and heading towards the tables.

     "Excuse me," he said to the big biker, "but I really don't think you should have done that."

     The biker reversed his grip on the cue and smiled over his shoulder at the other be-leathered thugs.

     "Well, citizen," he drawled, "I think you're in the wrong bar."

     Don winced in anticipation as Clark shook his head and started to remove his glasses.

     The biker sucker-punched Clark, driving the cue butt into the pit of his stomach so hard it broke.  Clark folded like a bad hand of poker and staggered backwards.

     Against his better judgement, Don rushed up and grabbed him.  "Okay, no problemo," he conciliated.  "He's just drunk, I'll get rid of him."

     At this point the young hooker made a break for the front door, and the bikers were distracted.  Don dragged Clark out into the alley; the main road was les than half a block away.

     "C'mon, move it," he gasped, hurrying him to the corner.  Clark was a ton weight and built like the proverbial brick shithouse.

     "W--wait."  Clark started gagging, and Don stepped back as a green-tinged flood splashed off the sidewalk.  Don quickly stuck his head back round the corner, but there were no signs of pursuit.  

     Clark straightened up and recovered his wind.  He seemed to find something funny, sure escaped Don.  

     "Best split while we can," urged Don.  "You got any wheels?"

     Clark calmly finished wiping his mouth and returned the handkerchief to his breast pocket.  "No," he replied, "I just flew in, haven't quite found my feet yet."

     You sure weren't looking too good on them a minute ago, Don thought.  "Maybe I should get you to a doctor," he suggested.  "That pool cue could've burst your liver."

     "No doctors," snapped Clark, his grip making Don wince.  "They wouldn't understand."

     They'd also want I.D., thought Don, but quacks had never understood him either.  "Look," he grumbled, "if you promise to quit playing Sir Galahad, we can go to my place.  I got a bottle of scotch."  Don looked at him uncertainly.  "Could you handle the bus?"

     Clark smiled, and straightened up.  Must be something to all that yuppie health-nut shit, Don figured.  He sure seems to be recovering fast and what a grip!

     "But you hardly know me," Clark pointed out.  "I could be a murderer."

     "Yeah, and I could be Howard Hughes," muttered Don, going back to check the alley.  Shit, the bikers were coming out the side door.  "And we could do with a bus," he hissed over his shoulder.

     A screech of tires snapped his attention back to the street.  A bus.  Clark had an arm out against it and was pulling the door open with the other.

     No bus stop, Don noticed, running up.  Funny, the young driver didn't look particularly obliging.  The kid looked out of it, nervously bleeding the vacuum brakes and staring pop-eyed at Clark.  Great, thought Don.  A rookie on the "vomit-comet" clunker.  He knew the drivers drew lots for this run, seen them sail by stops to avoid undesirable passengers.

     Clark sat himself down, nodding amiably to all and sundry.  Don was looking at the rest of the bus; they were looking suspiciously at Clark.  The driver glared at them in his mirror, then shrugged.  The bus lurched violently away and Don almost fell into the seat beside Clark.

     "Nervous driver," Clark said neutrally.  "Good reflexes, but excitable."

     "You're lucky he's not got your head for a hood ornament," Don hissed.  "What made you think he'd stop?"

     "It's the law," murmured Clark unconcernedly.

     Don made a rude noise.  "What law?"

     "The law of physics," Clark said, and looked out the window.

     Don's key rattled in the basement lock.

     "That you, Rover?" quavered an old woman's voice from upstairs.

     "Sure, ma," Don shouted.  "Got a friend with me, respectable gent."  He turned to Clark.  "It's our little joke.  I'm her watchdog.  Free rent for Fido."

     "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Wisdom," Clark called out politely, ducking into the illegal suite.  Don was looking at him.  

     "How did you know Jenny's name?" he asked suspiciously.

     "It's on her mail," Clark said, not meeting his eyes.

     "Yeah, inside the mail box," Don pointed out.  "You a cop? Some kind of welfare investigator?"

     Clark shook his head dismissively.

     "Well, something's fishy here," Don persisted, "and I don't care to be catch of the day."

     Clark sat down, took off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose.  "I'm an investigative reporter, a good one too, but it wasn't enough.  I was raised with traditional country values, now they're not enough."  He looked into his hands.  "Fishy?  It's all fishy.  Slimy, corrupt, and stinking to high heaven."

     Don sensed a story coming and sat on the bed, fumbling under it for his bottle of cheap scotch.

     Clark looked up.  "It's in the drawer," he said absently.

     It was.  Don had forgotten he'd been tidying up.  This story had better be good.  He took a bigger swig than he'd intended, offering it to Clark.

     "Wasted on me," Clark mumbled, running fingers through his conservatively cut hair.  "Everything here is insubstantial as a dream, a living nightmare."

     "How about coffee?" Don offered, feeling concern.  "You oughta lay off that green shit, it's giving you the horrors.  Worse than friggin' absinthe."

     Clark took out the odd little bottle, tossing it over to Don.  It was heavy as lead.

     "You're right," Clark said.  "I don't need to screw up my body as well as my head.  It's just more real than anything this world has to offer."

     Junky talk, thought Don.  "Look, I don't know what it is, and I don't need to.  It's poison, like booze 'n pills.  Kinda stuff you take when you hate yerself."

     Clark looked at him and smiled sadly.  "I was trying to understand, to feel how it is for you poor bastards..." he winced at the word.  "Sorry, the 'K' is still affecting me.  I just needed to know why you do it."

     Don didn't like being anybody's 'poor bastard', but Clark wasn't just slumming.  Don knew a broken man when he saw one, the shaving mirror gave him plenty of practise.

     "I really tried, you know," Clark confided.  "I could see what needed doing and I knew my duty."  He reached automatically for the bottle, and Don nearly went with it when he was slow letting go.

     "I did try," he continued, around a swig.  "No one believes it ever happened now, but I did.  They made it a joke, a comic turn."  Clark grimaced.  "There was a woman too.  That one didn't make the funny pages."

          "Then, of course, there was the Bomb," Clark continued bitterly.  "It wasn't only a quick and nasty end to the war or a warning to the Reds.  Homo Sapiens really needed a bigger stick, and fast."

     Don didn't mind drinking stories, but this was getting too tall.

     "Look, buddy," he said.  "It was about a broad, right?  None of my business, but sometimes a guy loses it and things just happen.  Broads can lose it too, always pretend they didn't or you made them.  It's just the way it is."  He shrugged, "You either accept how people are or go nuts."

     "She wanted it all," Clark whispered.  "The most dangerous assignments, always playing with fire.  She flaunted her body, encouraged my timorous advances."  He looked into his hands.   "There was an... an accident."

     "Christ almighty," Don protested.  "So things got a little rough, such a thing as crime of passion.  You make it sound like burnt offerings."

     Clark's mouth twisted.  "Isn't that standard procedure with the supernatural?  Virgin sacrifice, iconisation, expedited retirement for inconvenient dieties."  He laughed, almost a bark.  "She wasn't chaste. I was, totally.  She was a woman of the city and used to getting what she wanted.  She got more than that.  I lost my virginity when I felt her pelvis snap, and didn't stop."

     Clark put on his glasses, and looked at Don.  "I didn't have to stop, and no power on earth could make me."

     Don had never experienced the horrors till now and him not even drunk.  This guy wasn't kidding; that 'big blue' stuff wasn't easterners' bullshit after all.  

     That was one lucky biker, he thought nervously.  But what about me?  Then he remembered the poison.  Don glanced quickly at the little lead bottle on his bedside table.  Clark noticed.

     "Oh, that's just 'Jiminy Cricket juice', a little drop of something to humble me.  Isn't it ironic the only thing that can hurt me is from my real home?"  Clark winced at a memory.  "I was raised firm and God-fearing by my foster parents.  Dad set some of the crystals from the wreck in his belt, he knew the discipline a growing boy needed."

     Don took a hefty swig of scotch courage.  "Look, are you sitting here trying to tell me you're...?"

     "Let's just say a 'landed immigrant'," Clark interrupted.  "But I prefer Clark."

     "Okay, no argument from me," Don said hurriedly.  "But one guy trying to change the system... hey, I could have saved you the trouble.  Some things we just gotta accept."

     Clark gripped the arms of Don's easy chair, they crumbled like rotten balsa.  "I can't accept the rulers of this world running it into the ground for their insane greed.  I wasn't raised to wink at sin."

     Don felt the bullshit fuse blow in his head, it wasn't the first time.  That's what got him fired, got him drunk.  Maybe today got him dead.

     "Jesus Christ!" he exploded.  "You got eyes that can see through everything but lead and you understand nothing."  Don had never been able to get a grip of his liquor-loosened tongue.

"Look at your poor bloody parents."

     Clark glared, and Don felt his face start to itch like a bad case of sunburn.  He ploughed on.

     "They signed on for a bundle of joy, and got themselves an H-bomb to raise.  It's a wonder the strain didn't kill them."  Probably did, thought a part of Don's brain, objectively calculating his hair's flashpoint.  "Of course your dad used the belt.  He must have been terrified of losing control, of you going wrong.  Why do you think they had such an emphasis on strict moral values?  They must have felt like ma and pa Frankenstein."

     Clark dropped his gaze, and Don's microwaved skin relaxed.

"They were such good people," Clark whispered brokenly.  "I never thought..."

     "Kids don't," Don observed.  "But you ain't a kid anymore."

     "No," dead-panned Clark.  "I'm a failure"

     Don eased up on the vitriol.  "Hey, you were Hercules versus the Hydra.  We can grow new fuehrers faster than you can lop 'em off."

     "It was more like Augeas's stables," Clark demurred.  "Everything one big, rotten pile of road apples no matter which horse you backed."

     "Let me guess," Don muttered sarcastically.  "Too many of us yahoos for you?"

     Clark stared at him miserably.

     "Sounds like you didn't have much luck controlling sexual behavior either," Don opinioned.  "Or the toxic ecology, nuclear proliferation, wars--the shit that really matters."

     "You're right," Clark admitted.  "I am a failure, a super-failure.  I failed mankind, myself, the woman who said she loved me."

     Don nodded to himself.  Pussy.  Nice honest guy hits the skids... cher-chez la femme.

     A wallet appeared in Clark's hands, open at a picture of an intense young woman.  "It wasn't Clark she wanted," he said bitterly.  "A regular guy wasn't enough.  Like Semele with Zeus, she wanted to experience the full vigour of a super-mortal.  She wanted a baby to God.  And I didn't know what desire was, what it can drive man to."

     Don didn't need an oil painting, probably somewhere between spontaneous combustion and an exploding sex-doll.  Not exactly Madonna and child.

     "The authorities weren't slow to point out that the public wasn't big on illegal aliens, let alone ones with superhuman advantages.  And as for, as they put it, 'fucking our womenfolk to death'..."

     "But it was an accident," Don consoled.  "Besides, what could they do about it?  You're invulnerable, right?"

     "They promised to nuke me; when ever, where ever.  Nuke me till I glowed in the dark," Clark growled.  "Not too many dinner invitations, eh?"  He looked at Don.  "I'd be a cross between lightning rod and radioactive leper.  Me, a fugitive from justice.  Not much of a hero, eh?"

     Don shrugged.  "Those bastards would be as quick to re-crucify Christ if he was stupid enough to attempt a come-back."

     "But I feel so powerless," Clark moaned, "so impotent."

     Don patted him on the shoulder.  "Welcome to the human race, buddy.  Here, have a drink."


End file.
